


lies we told in summertide

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Chapter and Verse (Varric Tethras x Min Hawke) [14]
Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, F/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 23:04:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13691700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Min Hawke finds the Kirkwall summers intolerable, especially now that Anders has grown distant and cold, and she’s in need of a confidant.  Varric is always there for her, but when a mistake turns life-threatening, certain lines begin to blur.





	lies we told in summertide

The summer days stretched long, long, long, humming with a tension that Min Hawke could feel all around her.  It was thick in the air like chokedamp, a foul miasma that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise.  She felt it in her chest.  Felt it in her belly.  Felt it in every kiss she shared with Anders, every time he brushed the hair back behind her ear, every time he embraced her, his face pale above those black, forbidding robes.

Sometimes she tried to give it a name.  How many times had she talked with Anders?  How many times had she asked him what was wrong?  But the answers he gave her were thin and glancing.  They eased for a moment, but left her feeling more uncertain than before.  She wasn’t sure if they were lies or half-truths, but neither sat well with her.  

Lately, it felt like Varric was the only one she could talk to.  It had felt good to get it all out a few weeks ago; she’d shown up drunk at his door in the middle of the night, and like a good friend, he’d taken her in.  Since then, it’d been nearly every night.  Some nights it was simple chatter.  Other nights it was the hard stuff, Carver and Bartrand, family and the weight of it, the strife between the mages and the templars.  And some nights it was just hand after hand of Wicked Grace with anyone who happened along.

Varric had let her open up in a way she could not with the others, even after years together.  Aveline was hopeless at anything romantic, Fenris would just as soon tie up Anders and leave him bundled for the templars, Anders goaded Merrill so mercilessly Hawke hated to bring up any problems with him to the elf, and Isabela had been gone for years now.  Bethany, too.  She’d thought of writing Bethany more than once, but Bethany always sounded so distressed about Warden life, and she couldn’t bear to weigh her sister down with anything more.  Especially since the terrible letter she had had to write about losing Mum.

But Varric just listened.  Let her talk. Let her rant.  Let her cry.  She loved him for that.

She sat on the end of the bed she shared with Anders, summer heat leaching in through the walls as she kicked her heels.  She was sticky with sweat and suffocating in the heat.  Outside the bedroom, she could hear the conversations of Bodahn and Orana, Sandal’s excited interjections, Molossus snoring happy doggy snores.  She wondered that any of them could breathe at all, it choked her so.

She had to get out of the manor.  Early evening was the worst, not late enough to sleep her anxieties away, too late to head out to somewhere outside of Kirkwall with the others.

She shoved her feet into her boots.  The Hanged Man it was.  Again.

 

* * *

 

The summer twilight was a muggy, sweaty thing.  Kirkwall’s stone held the heat jealously, and the fug followed her down the familiar streets of Lowtown and into the Hanged Man.

She pushed her way past sticky elbows and the funk of unwashed Lowtowners, stopping only for a pint from Corff that she carried up the stairs.  The foam sloshed over the edge of the tankard, but she didn’t mind.  She’d have another in half an hour, anyway.

Her knuckles beat a familiar refrain on Varric’s door.  “Come in,” he called, and for the first time in days, she felt something she couldn’t quite place.  It felt good.

“Just me, Varric,” Hawke said, sidling in through the door.  “Are you free?”

Varric sat at the end of the table, sheets of parchment in front of him, pen in hand.  She caught a glimpse of him in deep concentration, brows knitted together,  _pensive_  written all over his face.  Then he caught sight of her, and his face split into a grin.  “Always for you, Hawke.”

“Flatterer,” she said.  She took the closest seat, setting her tankard far from his papers.  They looked important, Varric’s looped script small and tidy over fronts and backs of the parchment.  He set down his pen, a curious gold-plated thing that seemed terribly intricate.  Dwarven; had to be.  Quite a bit less messy than a quill.  “Am I interrupting anything?  Hard at work on your latest tale?”

Varric chuckled.  “Just keeping track of my connections.  There’s an unbelievable amount of paperwork in keeping a spy network, even one as small as mine.”  But she couldn’t help noticing that as he spoke, he carefully tucked the papers away to his other side, keeping them from her sight.

She narrowed her eyes skeptically.  “I know it’s quite a bit more elaborate than you say.  I’ve my own sources, you know.”  

He held out his hands.  “Ahh, Hawke, let me practice my deflection a little more.  Aveline’s going to be around for drinks with Donnic later, and I have to pretend all I do is sit on my ass and write my books.”

“I think she knows you rather better than that after all this time,” said Hawke.  She wondered what he was really writing, but she knew better than to needle him about it.  Varric was either disarmingly honest or infuriatingly obfuscating, and she didn’t feel like obfuscation tonight.  “We’ve all seen a lot of shit together, haven’t we?”

“That we have.  We’ve been in the thick of things.  Where do you think I get my story ideas from?”

“Do you ever miss how it used to be?” she asked.  “Before the Deep Roads, before everything got so… complicated.  Just the group of us, running round, getting into scrapes and hauling ourselves back out of them.  For a while there, it all seemed so clear.”

“Feeling nostalgic now, are you?” asked Varric.  “Keep it up, I can take some notes.”

“I don’t understand how it is it always comes back to that.  Not everything’s a story, you know,” said Hawke slowly.  “Sometimes it just is, and you have to sort it out as you go, not parcel it out afterwards into neat chapter and verse.”  She took a long draught of her drink, fighting back an abrupt wave of moroseness.  “I used to quite like stories.  Then people started telling them about me, and I -- I don’t feel like a Champion, Varric.  I’m just me, and it’s not enough.”

Varric held up the pen.  She stared at it, wondering what he was doing.  Then he rolled the papers up around it and tossed the whole package unceremoniously onto the empty chair a few feet away.  The pen clattered as it hit the hard surface, rolling out from the sheath and falling to the floor.  Varric made no move to pick it up.

“So we’ll skip the story, then,” he said.  “I was tired of staring at that shit anyway.”

“Varric,” she began.  Looked at his face, broad, ruddy, open.  The feeling from the doorway came over her again, and this time she could name it.   _Trust._  She looked down into her drink.  “Everything’s going to shit, isn’t it?”

He tilted his head, gazing at her.  His hazel eyes were warm, their expression soft.  “You wanna talk about it?”

She laughed, a real smile feeling most welcome on her face.  “I really don’t.  Is that all right?”

“Course it is.  So what do you want to talk about instead?”

“Anything else,” she said, casting about for conversation ideas.  Nothing normal came to mind.  Bullshit it was, then.  She squared herself to face him, and began to unspool pure ridiculousness.

“All right, then.  I heard a rumor that Meredith has an adult-sized rocking horse in her office and rides it when she gets angry.  And that Orsino wears a bright pink dressing gown with tassels to bed.  And that Elthina has forty-three different lovers, all of them half her age at the oldest, and the real reason the Chantry’s locked at night is because she likes her orgies in private.  Care to verify any of it?”

“Well, I don’t know where you’re getting your information from, Hawke, but it’s utter crap.  Word on the street is that Elthina’s a black widow and kills off every suitor after the penultimate moment, so orgies would make that a lot more complicated.  Everyone knows it’s Cullen with the pink and the tassels, since Orsino only sleeps in the finest Antivan silks.  Meredith had a rocking horse as a kid but beat it to death since it was insubordinate.  What else you got?”  Varric leaned back in his chair, smirking.  

“Summer,” said Hawke with disgust.  “What’s this blasted Marcher summer about?  It’s sticky and revolting and entirely antithetical to the Fereldan way of life.  We’re meant to be freezing our arses off at all times.”

“You Fereldans wouldn’t know the first thing about decent weather.  You know your brains are all scrambled, too much exposure to cheese and damp dog hair.  It’s sad, really,” said Varric, shrugging.

“Now you’re just being silly.  There is never enough cheese.”

“You’re right.  That was a lie.”

“Lying is wrong, Varric.”

“So I hear.”

Hawke shifted in her chair, picking her feet up and curling up within it.  Being a dwarf’s chair, it was a bit difficult to do, but she was up to the challenge.  She rested her arms on her knees and grinned at him.  “I’m not sure what I’d do without you, you know.”

He folded his arms.  “Lying is wrong, Hawke.”

“Not lying,” she said simply.

“Right.”  For a moment, he seemed almost pained; something about the way his mouth twitched, the way his gaze slid past her purposely.  Then he was all smiles again, hazel eyes bright and playful.  “That’s because I’m indispensable.”

“It’s true.  Everyone needs a trusty dwarf,” she said.  

There was another knock at the door.  “That’ll be Aveline and Donnic,” said Varric.  “You’re welcome to stay, of course.”

“I think I will,” said Hawke.  She uncurled herself, stood up to answer the door.  Before leaving the table, she leaned down close to him, her breath making a loose strand of his hair flutter faintly.  “It’s just -- I know you must be getting sick of me, but do you mind if I come back again tomorrow?”

He looked up at her.  This close, she could appreciate the lines at the edges of his eyes, carved by years of easy winks.  The scar on his nose was a sharp red line surrounded by faded freckles, and his grin, when it came, dazzled.  “Hawke, you don’t even have to ask.”

 

* * *

 

The summer nights were inky, star-flung things, the only bit of blessed cool relief to be found.  She even fancied she felt a chill.  When the slivered crescent moons swung low she made her way out from Varric’s, daggers at her belt, boots soft and silent on the stone, her feet carrying her home.

Years past, it had always been just a night or two a week at the Hanged Man.  Now it was nightly, a far better option than the alternative.  She’d never been so good at her constellations before now.  

Some nights Anders told her he was staying at his clinic, and she didn’t leave the Hanged Man until dawn.  Some nights he stayed in, and when she asked if he wanted to come out for a drink, he said no, staring down at his manuscript in the study.  She’d kiss him, tell him she loved him, pull him close to her.  Every time she wondered if he’d return to her, the man she’d fallen in love with.

Sometimes he would, in a shy, sweet smile, or a tilt of his head, or passion alight in his eyes.  But more often he’d hug her as if she wasn’t really there, and return to the study to sit in silence with the books.  And she’d be off to see Varric again.

Hawke rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, hurrying down her alley shortcut, wishing she had perhaps declined a few of those later rounds.  Her head swam.  Lowtown was always eerie this time of night, and she knew she should have her head on straight, should remember where she was and what she was doing, but the world was badly made, damn it, and --

Footsteps behind her.  She rounded, daggers flashing silver in her hands, and faded into the shadows of the alley, ready for blood.

Varric stood there, shaking his head.  He’d clearly come after her in a hurry.  His overcoat was on crooked, and something about his silhouette just felt off.  “You’re slipping, Hawke.  I tailed you for three streets before you noticed.”

“Well, you aren’t creepy at all,” said Hawke, delightedly slipping her daggers back into her belt and stepping from the shadows to face him.  “What are you doing here?  I thought you were heading to sleep.  Which begs the question, do you sleep in a nightcap?  Are there special dwarven ones?”

“I don’t, there are, and you don’t even want to know what they look like,” said Varric.  “You were already gone when I realized you’d forgotten something.”  He pulled a dagger from a pouch by his belt.  “Missing this?”

“My favorite throwing dagger!  Let me guess, I left it in your wall after throwing practice tonight?”  That was right, she’d gotten it out to do a bit of target practice on Varric’s wall after Aveline and Donnic turned in for the night.  She hadn’t been sure if he still wanted her there so late, as he’d clearly been distracted by something; she’d caught him fidgeting with his parchments more than once with a pensive expression on his face.  But he’d insisted that she stay for a while, and so she had, sharing a few more rounds with him and tossing knives into the wall until they both felt better.

She took the finely made blade from his hand and carefully replaced it among her stash, though part of her wondered why he simply didn’t give it to her tomorrow.  It was a bit odd.  Helpful, though.  “You’re the best, Varric.”

“I’m just a simple dwarf who does what he can,” said Varric.

She rolled her eyes hard enough she was worried she strained an eyelid muscle.  “You’re far more than that, and I won’t hear tell otherwise,” she said.  

They both fell quiet for a moment, and Hawke realized what looked different about him.  “You -- you forgot Bianca?”

It was difficult to make out his expression in the dark.  “...huh.  Guess I did.  I thought I’d catch you closer to the Hanged Man,” he said, disquieted.

Noises around the corner of the alleyway.  “I hope we don’t regret it,” she muttered to him, hurriedly leading a path away from the sound and handing him back the throwing dagger, slapping it grip first into his palm.  For a moment it seemed as if they were in the clear.

But when they rounded the next corner, a knot of hulking men approached, their bodies taut and predatory.  “We were just leaving,” said Hawke brightly, but her hands were on her daggers in an instant.  

She had just a second to wish that she’d come fully kitted out, laden with smoke flasks and Antivan fire, but she’d gone out for drinking, not full-on war.  The men rushed at the two of them and she had to make do with what she had, lashing out in a dizzying whirlwind of kicks and daggers, flourishes and footwork.  She might’ve been drunk, but not that drunk that she couldn’t do serious damage.

She knifed one lackey in the neck and slashed another across the top of the thigh, bringing them both down, then ricocheted into the gang’s leader.  The man leapt forward with a twin strike.  She sidestepped to evade him, but he stepped with her, and before she could counter he grabbed her in a chokehold, one foul-smelling forearm locked under her jaw and the other arm pinning hers to her sides.  

Shit, shit, fuck.  She gagged as his arm dug against her throat, planted herself, and struck him with a headbutt to the chin, but he barely staggered.  

Black spots flickered at the edges of her vision.  Her lungs burned for air.  She was desperately trying to angle her leg between his for a kick to the groin when the man dropped like a stone.  She whirled back to see him flat on his belly, her throwing dagger neatly embedded between his shoulder blades.  She glanced up and there was Varric further down the alley, pulling back his arm after the throw.

“Nice one, Varric!” she called, but his name hadn’t quite left her lips when the last man darted forward and buried his dagger in Varric’s back.

She screamed as Varric crumpled to his knees, but the sound caught in her bruised throat.  So she ran forward in a vicious charge, blades singing in the night air, and she hurtled into the last bastard so hard she knocked him over.  Then she was upon him, panting, scrabbling for any weak spot in his armor, blades tearing through belly and elbows, back and throat.  Blood fountained in a black torrent, punctuated only with a terrible, fading gurgle. She ripped her blades out of his body and ran to Varric’s side, dropping her daggers on the stone below with a piercing ring.

He was curled on his side, the blade’s handle still visible around his right shoulder, cruelly jutting out at her.  She ignored it for the moment -- one never knew if removing it right now would do worse harm -- and gently rolled him enough to see his face.  “Varric,” she gasped.  “Varric, please, tell me you’re all right.”

A hoarse, rattling cough as she rolled him.  “Ahh, fuck,” Varric groaned, staring up at her.  He was pale, face twisted, sweat beading on his forehead.  “That’s my favorite coat.  Do you know how much --” he winced, gritting his teeth, “--good tailoring costs?”

“How bad is it?” she asked, slipping her arm under him so that he could sit half propped up, leaning against her.  Her heart thundered in her chest.  

“Not a healer, remember?” Varric asked with a wheeze.  He was getting greyer by the minute, his breathing rapid and labored.  He coughed, blood flecking his lips.  “A guess? Bad.”  He closed his eyes, sagging against her.

“No,” she hissed, “we are fixing this, Varric, that’s your -- your crossbow arm and your writing arm, and your wanking arm probably, and you’re going to be just fine, do you hear me, this isn’t that bad --”  

She suddenly remembered Anders, packing potions into a hip pouch for her.  _You’ll want to keep this on you, love, if ever I’m not with you.  I couldn’t bear to think of you being hurt._ Poultices that smelled of deep mushroom and elfroot, things he’d charmed with wisps of spell and healing mana.   _Not as good as a healer at your side, of course, but they’ll do in a pinch._

Her hands fumbled at her belt, digging frantically.  She cursed the fact that the last few ales had her dizzy, or was that the fear?  “Hang on, damn you!”  She ripped off the pouch she’d never needed before, her hands shaking, and pulled out two cloth-wrapped poultices and a small silver flask.  She pulled the top off with her teeth and thrust the flask’s mouth through Varric’s lips, hand still shaking violently against his cheek.  Once she’d emptied it into his mouth, she tore the front of his shirt open, searching for a wound.  

Nothing on the front.  At least the blade hadn’t gone all the way through.  “Stay with me, Varric dear, got to see how bad it is,” she muttered as she shifted him so that he lay half across her lap, leaving access to the hated blade buried in his back.  He was dead weight on her legs, a realization that only served to increase her terror.  She grabbed her fallen dagger and sliced through layers of leather and Highever weave, tailoring be damned, until she could peel off the blood-soaked cloth in strips and finally expose the wound.

The blade rose and fell with each shallow breath he took.  Hawke stared at the blood slicking his broad back, trickling from around the blade’s base in steady rivulets.  She tore open the outer cloth bindings on the poultices, remembering Anders’ words.   _See this inner binding here?  Keeps it all together, but it’s thin enough the herbs can get through to do their work.  You could place it into a gut wound or an open fracture and it’ll work right through that inner layer.  I just hope you never need it._

She packed them around the blade and into the edges of the wound, blood hot against her fingers.  She took a deep breath, then leaned down and whispered.

“I’ve got Anders’ healing poultices on you.  They need to get down into the wound to help, but I’ve got to remove the blade.”

A faint reply, enough to make her vision blur with sudden tears.  “Trust you,” he mumbled.

She wrapped her hand around the dagger’s haft, her other hand hovering over the poultices.  She pulled -- a short, sharp groan -- the blood welled in a rising flood -- and she stuffed the poultices deep into the wound, flinging the blade aside and putting pressure on the wound with both hands.

Hawke whimpered, fighting back a sob that threatened to overwhelm.  She bowed her head, hands trembling with the effort of putting pressure on Varric’s blood-stickied back, and she tried to count his breaths.  “Come on, come on,” she bit out.  Her voice seemed to catch in her throat, making it hard to form words, but she didn't care.  She couldn’t think of anything else to do but pray, though it was nothing like what you’d hear in the Chantry.  

“You’ve got to make it until we can get you to Anders.  You’ve got to.  I can’t lose you, you foolish dwarf.  Why didn’t you bring Bianca?  Why would you ever leave without her?  You know what a shithole this city is, you know there’s wretched thieves and murderers round every step, we both know it.  Look, you can’t go like this, it’s not nearly noble enough and we both know you’ll either go out in a blaze of glory, or comfortably in your old age atop a pile of ill-gotten gold, and, and, neither of those is today so just come on, Varric, come back, come back to me.”

Movement beneath her.  Varric’s back muscles shifting as he moved his arms, tensing beneath her pressure.  “Hawke?”

“Careful, careful.  Let me see how it looks,” she said.  Cautiously she lifted up one hand a few inches, and when there was no fresh bleeding, she lifted the other one.  The poultices were bloody, but seemed to be holding even without her hands applying pressure.  She wiped the tears from her face and fumbled in the pouch again, finding a roll of clean bandage material.  “Here, let me wrap it.  I think the bleeding’s stopped.”  She wrapped the bandages round his chest and shoulder, tying them in place.  “How do you feel?” she asked uncertainly.

“Weirdly, like I got stabbed in the back,” he said, voice still faint.  “But… better.  Help a dwarf up?”  She obliged quickly, helping him up to a sitting position so that he leaned against her, her arm around him.  He rested his head against her chest.  He no longer had that awful, greyish cast to his skin; he was still pale, but there was at least a hint of color to his cheeks again.  Blearily, he blinked up at her.  “Shit, Hawke, what happened to you?”

Hawke swallowed past the bruising in her throat.  “Got choked a bit, but I’m all right.”

“No, I mean…”  He gestured weakly at her face and arms.  “Lot of blood.  You okay?  Any of it yours?”

“It’s all yours, you daft dwarf,” she said, making a noise that might have been a laugh, or a sob.  She couldn’t tell which.  She noticed her hands, coated in blood past the wrists, and remembered wiping her face just a moment ago.  She probably looked a bloody maniac, though it didn’t matter.  “I thought I was going to lose you.”  

The sound that followed was decidedly not a laugh.  She leaned her head down against his, her cheek pressed against his sweat-damped hair, and cried.

 

* * *

 

The summer dawn was bright and piercing, heralded by the screams of gulls and the smell of rising chokedamp.  Hawke spent it sitting on a cot in Anders’ clinic, keeping watch over Varric as Anders worked.

Poor Anders.  The expression on his face when he saw the pair of them -- Varric bandaged and bloodied, shirt and jacket in tatters, Hawke covered in his blood.  He’d clearly been shaken, though his fear had turned to relief when Hawke explained that Varric was the one who’d been hurt.  

Hawke ached for Anders and his worry, yes, but she also resented the relief that had crossed his face, brief as it had been.  She knew it was only that he feared for her, but she was still strangely irritated.  _It might not have been me, but it was still **Varric**!_

Together they helped Varric onto a cot.  “What happened?” Anders asked, magic flaring crisp and clean from his hands over Varric’s bloodied back.  His face showed intense concentration; he’d always found Varric the most difficult of them to heal due to his dwarven nature.

“Dagger in the back down in Lowtown,” said Hawke, watching closely as Anders laid down his magic in weaves and layers she didn’t quite understand.  His style had always been so different from Bethany’s, or Dad’s.  “I had your healing kit on me.  I don’t know what might have happened without it, Anders.  Thank you.”

“I hadn’t realized you’d gone out,” said Anders sadly.  “I might have been able to help more, had I been there.”

“I knew you were at the clinic tonight,” said Hawke.  “I didn’t want to trouble you.”  Which was a lie, of course, but she didn’t find the distinction to be important.  She swung her heels, kicking them back and forth as she sat on the edge of her cot.  

Anders spared her a small smile, which made her feel worse somehow.  “It’s true I was needed here tonight.  There are five other patients in the back.”  He let out a long breath, the magic flickering down to nothingness.  “I’m glad you were with him, Hawke.  The poultices helped a great deal.  Varric?”

There was only a quiet snore from the cot, and Anders reached out for a nearby bowl of clean water and a few cloths.  A shimmer of a flame spell heated the water briefly until steaming.  “Good, I hoped he would sleep.  He’ll mend fully within the week, though it’s going to leave a nasty scar.”  He sighed.  “I love Varric, but dwarves are just beastly to heal.”

They both turned at a faint voice from the backroom.  The call came again, and Anders looked down at Varric’s sleeping form.  “I’m sorry, love, but would you mind looking after him?  One of the boys back there is quite ill with fever.  Would you be able to clean him and get him some blankets when you’re done?”

Hawke nodded.  “Of course, Anders.  Listen--”  She reached out and gripped his wrist, dried blood cracking and flaking off her hand as she flexed her fingers.  “Thank you.”

He just gave her one of those crooked, wistful smiles, pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and headed into the back, grabbing up his staff and some bandaging as he went.  She watched him go, then shook her head.

She turned her attention to her hands.  The dried blood seemed a baleful omen, even though the danger had blessedly passed.  She dutifully scrubbed them clean in the water Anders had left her, tingeing the water pink.  Once they were clean she took the cloth, soaked it in the water (it was all his blood anyway) and began carefully washing Varric’s back, taking great care to stay away from the wound near the shoulder.  It was beginning to close up already, thanks to Anders’ magic, but she knew from experience that terrible injury wasn’t healed in an hour.  It had taken her a full two weeks to get back to fighting shape after the Arishok, even with Anders working on her daily.  Varric’s wound was centered now in a field of blooming bruises in purple and yellow, and she shivered to see it.

She cleaned gently, methodically, dipping the cloth in water periodically as the water turned darker and darker.  His skin was firm and surprisingly smooth beneath her hands.  She cleaned and cleaned until no more blood remained, then got to her feet and fetched a cloth to dry him off.

As she worked she found herself murmuring to him.  “I thought I’d lost you back there, you know.”  His back rose and fell with deep, steady breaths.  “It’s something I learned leaving Lothering.  You don’t always go out in glory.  Sometimes the other man just has one good day.”  She sighed.  “With Carver it was an ogre.  It was stupid, cut off from the rest of the darkspawn.  It wasn’t supposed to be that far from the horde at all.  But when Carver raised his sword, it veered left instead of right.  It struck him down.  And it was so stupid, you see, I was just so struck by the unfairness.  The suddenness.  It only took one mistake.  And that ogre had a real good day, up until Bethany and I killed it.  Just like that bastard in the alley nearly did.”

She finished drying his back, then stood up and collected a few ragged blankets from the cupboard.  She laid them down tidily over Varric, pulling them up to his chin.  The way he was laying, turned away from her, she could just see the curve of his cheek and one closed eye.  His color was good; his cheeks were ruddy again.  She sat down on the cot across from him, simply watching.

“I don’t know if you’re all right, Varric.  You have letters you don’t want me to see, that make you upset; you left Bianca on a fool’s errand, just to bring me back a knife when you knew I’d be back tomorrow.  Maybe you don’t want to be at home either, these days.  I don’t know.”  She pulled up her feet on the cot, stretching out onto her side.  It might feel good just to lay down for a bit.  It’d been such a long day.

“Do you ever think we ought to run away together, you and me?” she said softly.  “Far away from mages and templars and letters and knives?”  She closed her eyes, laying her head against a thin, threadbare pillow.  “I’d run away on my own, but honestly, I don’t want to think of my life without you in it.”

“Flatterer,” said Varric faintly.  

She cracked open one eye to see him on his side facing her, the blankets surrounding him like a cocoon, his hair a rumpled mess, his eyes deeply shadowed.  It took her a minute to realize he was winking.

“Honestly,” said Hawke, “you are terrible.”

“Guilty.”  He yawned, blinking sleepily at her.  “Though it’s rude to insult the gravely injured.”

“It’s rude to get gravely injured in the first place,” she said.  “Oh, no, awful.  Now you’re making me yawn.”  She reflected for a moment.  “Did you hear all that nonsense I was saying?”

Varric smiled a little.  “Some of it.  You just keep unfolding like a flower, Hawke.”

“Oh, shove it.”  Impulsively Hawke reached out, patting Varric’s arm under its blanket fortifications.  “Glad you’re all right.”  She pulled her hand back, tucking it under her head as she burrowed into her sparse bedding, and she yawned again.  “Drinks tonight?  On me.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Spot the Buffy reference? It struck me that this was such a little mistake to make, but that's all that's needed, sometimes, for finality.


End file.
